


Stones and Stars

by TheCatWrites



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Complete, Feels, Memorial Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCatWrites/pseuds/TheCatWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's first Memorial Day out of the ice. (Set post-movie in the MCU).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stones and Stars

**Author's Note:**

> The author keeps having feels about stuff. She's not sure why this happens, but she's pretty grateful that the result is a lot of writing!

Stones and Stars

“Rogers, I would swear you’re pretending to be this useless on purpose if I didn’t know how bad of a liar you are.”

Steve lets out a sigh and clenches his fists on the desktop, making sure to let go of the mouse this time. “If you’re just going to throw verbal abuse at me instead of helping, Tony, I’m hanging up. I’m giving up my gym time for this.”

The little moving picture of Stark’s face in the upper-right of the screen rolls its eyes. “No, no, we’ve gotta get you at least familiar with e-mail before Tuesday. I promised, and I definitely don’t want to draw Fury’s…fury.” He waits for a laugh. Now it’s Steve’s turn to roll his eyes. Guy cracks himself up.

“Tony.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, I’m with you. Right, d’you remember what I told you last week about using the internet?”

“Mostly?”

“Go ahead and open it up, then.”

Steve moves the mouse – he gets why they call it that now, since he had to plug it in to recharge and saw how the cord looked like a tail – across the desk, and the little arrow on the screen moves with it. When he bumps into the keyboard before the arrow is where he wants it to be, he freezes up for a second before he remembers to pick the mouse up and set it down somewhere with more room. He’s still not sure how that doesn’t also move the arrow. When the arrow is over the logo on the screen that represents the internet, which used to be a blue circle but somehow changed to a cartoon representation of Tony’s helmet a week ago (and of course Tony forswears all knowledge of how that happened), he pushes the leftmost of the buttons under his fingers.

The SHIELD seal appears on the screen, black on white at first and then fading to grey as various pictures and phrases, _links_ , he remembers, appear over it.

“Good job.” Tony manages to keep most of the impatience and condescension out of his tone. “See if you can get into your e-mail by yourself.”

Most of the words on the screen make about as much sense as they would if they were written in Greek, but even Steve can make the connection between mail and the picture of an envelope. He selects it and the screen changes, lines of text appearing, each line with a date and time on one side and a code, no, it’s called an e-mail address, on the other. He knows by now that each line of text represents a message, and if he chooses one it will take him to a new screen with the full message displayed for him to read.

“Progress,” Tony says, actually sounding pleased for once. “Think you’re ready to learn how to send a message, instead of calling me at 3 AM and asking me to send it for you?”

“That was _one time_.”

“And yet one too many. Pepper was most displeased. C’mon, AARP, I’ve met little old grannies who can fold me in half on Call of Duty. If they can camp my ass with a sniper rifle while they crochet scarves for their grandkids, you can learn how to send a letter over the internet.”

“I don’t know what -”

“Oh for… Never mind. Just. Click ‘Write Mail.’”

Steve does as he’s told. The screen changes again. It’s mostly blank. “Now what?”

“Okay, see where it says ‘To:’? That’s where you put the address of who you want the mail to go to. There’s a lot more to this, but for now just know that I’ve already put everyone’s SHIELD e-mail addresses into your computer for you. So all you have to do is start typing someone’s name in that white space. It’ll give you a list of options when you start. Pick the one you want. You can also pick more than one. Let’s practice that. Go ahead, click in the ‘To’ field and put me in there.”

Using the keyboard still doesn’t feel right. The keys aren’t stiff enough and they’re far too close together. His hands still look for the letters on different levels and he ends up putting more in wrong than he gets right. Carefully, he types in a “T” and a list suddenly appears, first names that start with T in alphabetical order. It only goes to Timothy Jameson. Tony’s name isn’t on there. “Your name isn’t on here.”

“Keep typing, don’t worry about it. It’ll narrow down the choices the more letters you put in.”

“Should I capitalize it?”

“No, no, just type it like you would if you were just writing my name down. Jesus.” In the little video he can see Tony take a drink of something amber out of a glass.

“Bit early in the morning for that, isn’t it?” He puts in the “o” and the list changes and now Tony’s name is there. He guesses at the next step on his own and is rewarded when using the mouse to choose “Tony Stark” gets rid of the other options, leaving the name on its own in the space where he was typing.

“Cool it, Capsicle, it’s apple juice. With nothing in it but apples. The missus is doing this weird cleanse thing and I’m nonalcoholic before noon in solidarity. Not by my own choice, mind you. Good guess, by the way. Want to go ahead and try for full honors by putting Pepper on there too?”

“Do I just start typing her name?”

“Yeah. Make sure to put a space between the two names though.”

It’s much quicker to put the second name in. “Now what?”

“Now put in a little title where it says ‘Subject.’ Ideally it should let the recipients know what to expect when they read the message. For now let’s just call this one ‘Test.’ Then when you’ve done that, the actual message goes in the big white space. Type whatever you want in there.”

“Test,” Steve types in the title field, then, for the body, “Tony Stark is the Worst Teacher Ever.”

“Oh, very mature. I suppose this means I shouldn’t expect an apple on my desk any time soon. That’s fine, I’ve had more than my weekly share of fresh fruit anyway.”

“You’ve had one glass of apple juice. And it’s Sunday.”

“Like I said. Go ahead and click where it says ‘Send’ and let’s be done for today, I’ve got like six press conferences about R&D on the arc reactor lined up this afternoon and I’m sure you’ve got patriotic stuff to do, what with Memorial Day coming up and all. Hey, speaking of, you down for a party? I’m thinking of having a little shindig-slash-Avengers reunion at my old place out in L.A., a little sun, surf, and sand kind of thing. Congratulations on saving the world and all that. We’ll light up the barbecue, roast some ribs. Maybe get Thor to smuggle us in a keg from his dad’s stash.”

Choosing “send” makes the window he was writing in disappear, sending him back to the one with the list of his messages. “Sounds fun, but…what’s Memorial Day?”

“Memorial…oh, right. Um. You’re vintage 1940, so I guess you’d still know it as Decoration Day. So, in the 60s, they changed the name to Memorial Day, moved it around to the last Monday of May and gave everybody the day off. It’s kind of an unofficial first day of summer now. Big day for family get-togethers, lot of beer gets drunk, lot of meat gets eaten, that kind of thing. Most of the big cities have parades. You’re kind of a big part of it, being the first superhero and all. Well, the you from the comic books, anyway.”

Steve sits back in his chair. “Decoration Day…I’d forgotten all about it.” He remembers late springtime in Brooklyn, hanging out in front of the Silver Star Diner with Bucky, drinking chocolate egg creams and watching the men in uniform and the women with their kids stream down the streets in an unofficial parade to Cypress Hills, each person carrying a white or yellow flower. Then, later, tagging along that one time, dressed in his best suit and Bucky in his brand-new uniform. Steve had already been rejected for service by then and was thinking about giving up, maybe applying for a desk job at the local command post so he’d at least be doing something to contribute. Walking in the hot sun had made his asthma act up. He takes a deep breath, feels how easy it is now to fill his lungs, the knowledge that he could hold his breath for ten, maybe fifteen minutes if he needed to and not feel any discomfort. But in 1939 he’d been a wheezing, sweaty mess by the time they got to the cemetery entrance, where the guards at the gate had given him that look, the one he’d gotten used to by then, the one that wondered what Bucky, the picture of the perfect soldier, was doing letting a scrawny waste of space like him hang around.

But all that discouragement, all that self-doubt, and all those years of people telling him no had disappeared the moment he saw those lines of white stones extending across the fields in perfectly ordered ranks. Each was a soldier, men and women who’d known what it meant to put on a uniform. Though it would be two years until the United States was dragged into committing to the war in Europe and Asia as a nation, there were quite a few new stones. They stood out, because instead of only one or two visitors, the new additions were surrounded by whole families.

That evening he’d falsified his first enlistment form.

“Steeeve? Steve? Hey! Earth to Captain Oblivious, come in Captain!”

“Huh?”

“You were staring off into space there for like thirty whole seconds. What’s up? Leftover brain freeze?”

“No, it’s…I’m fine. What were you saying?”

“I said I assume since you didn’t know about it, you don’t have keys to the city to receive and parades to parade in and babies to kiss all day tomorrow, which means on a level of one to America you’re free all day and can show up early to help me truck stuff down to the beach.”

“Tony, your house is in L.A. I live in Brooklyn. You’re in Manhattan. That’s a seven hour flight. You expect us to just hop on a plane tonight?”

“Yes. C’mon, I’ve been working on the tower all week and I’m jonesing for some Pacific coast sunshine and decent tacos. And Pepper is on day thirteen of this stupid juice thing and I’m in desperate need of dead animal. We can carpool. I’ll bring the Mad Libs. It’ll be fun. Please?”

“All right. But only because you asked nicely, and only if you do something for me first.”

“Depends on what that something is.”

“Cancel all your press conferences and call the others. We’re going to SHIELD HQ.”

“In D.C.?”

“Yes.”

“What for? There a new mission I need to know about?”

“No, nothing like that. If we’re going to be in California for Decoration…that is, Memorial Day, then there’s something I need to do before we head out there. Something we all need to do.”

“Okay. But I’m making you carry the briquettes down the cliffs. Also I get to tell Pepper it’s your fault that we’re canceling all our press for today on short notice.”

“Deal.”

“I’ll pick you up in thirty.”

Half an hour later, Steve’s waiting on the roof of the building next to his, duffel in one hand and a garment bag slung over his shoulder, watching a Stark Industries helicopter ease in for a landing. The skids touch down and the door slides open, Tony leaning out to wave him in. Steve hands over his duffel bag, which Tony chucks unceremoniously over the back seats of the passenger cabin into a cargo net to join the four pieces of luggage already there. He reaches for the garment bag but Steve shoots him a glare that makes him raise an eyebrow and back off, shrugging, to resume his seat.

Steve climbs aboard, hangs the bag carefully from the side of the cargo net, and slides the door shut, muffling the sound of the blades. It’s a passenger bird, soundproofed cabin holding eight seats, four and four facing each other across a small table bolted to the floor, with a sliding panel giving access to the cockpit and a radio to communicate with the pilot and copilot.

Three of the seats are already taken. Steve sits across from Tony, who’s wearing a t-shirt with a logo on it that says AC/DC, the slash replaced by a lightning bolt. Steve assumes it’s another band t-shirt, the man seems to have an endless supply of shirts with the names and logos of bands from the 1970s and ‘80s on them. The mini reactor glows faintly through the fabric, a rare sight, as Tony’s taken to wearing an opaque black undershirt beneath even his casual clothes to hide it, now that they’ve all got face recognition with the general public thanks to the news coverage of The Fight.

Next to Tony, by the window, Pepper sips some kind of green concoction from a water bottle as she types on her portable computer. Steve has a similar model, a gift from Tony…if you can call something basically forced into your hands against your protestations a gift. He’d barely been able to figure out how to turn it on and off. It was sitting in his desk drawer at home, waiting for him to get comfortable using the machine Pepper had brought him, one that still operated mainly through use of physical buttons and keys and not just representations on the screen. She looks up at him now and flashes him a quick smile. “Steve, I’ve been fielding everything from disappointed reporters to angry editors to distraught producers since we got airborne. Whatever you’ve got going on in D.C. had better be worth it.”

“It is, ma’am, I promise.”

“Good.” She looks back down at the screen in front of her.

Across from Pepper, in the seat next to Steve’s, sits Dr. Banner. “Didn’t expect to see you back in the city so soon, Bruce.”

“The Other Guy’s been pretty quiet since he got to come out and play,” Banner says with a shrug. “So I decided I’d take Mr. Stark here up on his offer to come see what they’ve got going on at Stark Industries.”

“Come see,” Tony snorts, “More like come in and take over development on the new deep-spec telescope because nobody wants to contradict you on anything.”

“Yes, and?”

“And the project’s finally in beta thanks to you after five years in R&D hell, I know, I know.”

“So?”

“So shut my cakehole and let you work.”

“Thank you.” Banner turns back to Steve, “So Captain, are you going to tell us what’s at HQ? Or do we have to wait until we get there?”

“I don’t think it’s the kind of thing I can really explain, sorry.”

“Just as long as it’s not the kind of surprise the Other Guy doesn’t like, I can wait.”

The helicopter starts to descend and Steve looks out the window, peering down at the ground. “This isn’t Washington.”

Tony shakes his head, “Nope, not yet. One more stop. Get the door?”

Steve reaches out and as the helicopter touches down he slides open the hatch, which is immediately filled by broad shoulders, blonde hair, and a friendly smile. “My brothers! It is good to see you!” Thor sits next to Steve, seeming to fill the entire rest of the available space in the cabin despite not being much taller than the Captain, and slings an arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a hug that actually feels a little too tight. He’s dressed in normal clothes, though perhaps Earth clothes would be a better term since the God of Thunder never really looks normal, not even in jeans and a t-shirt. Jane Foster, who Steve knows only from photos and Thor’s stories, climbs in after him and takes the seat between the Asgardian and the door, which Tony has to shut since Steve is currently the victim of Thor’s affectionate greeting.

“Thought you went back home for the trial,” Steve says as Thor lets go.

“Indeed,” says Thor, reaching across Steve to squeeze Banner’s shoulder, then across the table to do some kind of secret handshake with Tony that they came up with after their snack at the shawarma place. Thor had insisted that counted as a feast and made them all brothers-in-arms, including Agent Romanoff. He got very disappointed when none of them would join him in composing a ballad about their glorious victory, so Tony introduced him to the Midgardian concept of the Fellow Warriors’ Ritual Greeting, a.k.a. the Secret Handshake, to cheer him up. “However,” the god continues as the handshake ends in a fist bump, “thanks to the return of the Tesseract to its rightful home in my father’s treasury, frequent travel between the worlds is again possible, though sadly still not in the numbers the Bifrost would accommodate, or I would have brought my friends here as well so that you could all finally meet and share stories of battle. I have taught them the Greeting, Stark. I hope that is all right.”

“No worries, any bro-in-arms of yours is a bro-in-arms of mine,” Tony says.

“I knew you would see it that way! Now, speaking of introductions and greetings, I wish to introduce all of you to Jane Foster, she who found me when I was stranded on this world and helped me, though she thought me strange.”

“I still think you strange,” says Jane, but her tone’s affectionate. She’s tiny, shorter than Pepper and just as slender, and it seems odd to think of her holding her own in a relaionship with a Norse god, but when she reaches across her boyfriend to shake Steve’s hand she makes eye-contact and he can see something in her that reminds him of a certain Agent he once knew. She’s got that same spark. “It’s good to finally meet you, Captain,” she says. “Thor talks about you guys a lot. Dr. Banner, Mr. Stark, it’s such an honor, seriously, I’ve read your work and it’s just amazing, especially your joint thesis on the interaction between cosmic radiation and Earth’s magnetic field.”

“You’re no slouch yourself, little miss Einstein-Rosen bridge,” says Stark. “Your notes on the New Mexico portal site were, in a word, meticulous.”

Jane blushes, sinks down a little in her seat. “You’ve… _you’ve_ read _my_ notes?”

“Of course I have. So’s Banner. So hey, what’re you doing once you get your hands on that Ph.D.? We’ve got a new telescope going out in a few months that you might be interested in. Want to be first in line?”

“You mean the deep-spec? I thought that was in development hell?”

“Yeah, well. Now it’s not.” Banner smirks and Tony sticks out his tongue. “So what do you say? Gonna show up in New York this November?”

“Sure! I mean, definitely! Yes! Wow! Thank you!”

Thor looks at Steve. “Captain, do you have any idea of what they speak?”

“Not really. You get used to it.”

The rest of the trip to Washington passes in a blur of science-babble, Jane and Dr. Banner leaning on the table to talk around Steve and Thor. By the time they land at SHIELD HQ, the three scientists seem to have invented some sort of new public transportation system that will run on sunlight and wind and be elevated above the street traffic, Pepper has finished controlling the media fallout from Tony’s sudden change of plans, Steve has roughed out a three page comic about aliens invading and being defeated by getting bored and leaving as they listen to Tony and Dr. Banner debate which death ray would work best against them, and Thor has fallen asleep.

“Jet 2 is fueled up and ready at Dulles,” Pepper informs Tony as they head through the roof access, the God of Thunder trailing slightly behind, yawning and rubbing his eyes with one hand. “We can head straight over when we’re done here.”

“Over where?” Thor asks.

“Oh, I’m having a get-together at my place in L.A. tomorrow. You’re invited. Everyone’s invited, actually. Kind of a people-who’ve-saved-the-world class of 2012 reunion.” Tony’s fidgeting, playing with his watch as he walks.

“I do not understand class of 2012, but I will gladly attend your celebration.”

“Cool. Miss-soon-to-be-Doctor Foster’s welcome too, of course.”

Steve stops in front of the elevators. “Wait here a minute, guys, I’ll be right back.” He ducks into the restroom and hangs the garment bag, which he’s brought in with him, from a stall door.

When he steps back out into the hallway, the friendly banter falls silent, trailing off as they take in the sight of Steve in his uniform. His real uniform, not the one based on his old touring costume. The olive green of the jacket has faded slightly in seventy years, but the bars and medals on his chest are polished and hang from bright new ribbons, the braid looping around his shoulder has been replaced, and the overall effect is as though someone has teleported him here straight from 1941. Which is basically what happened. The others seem to forget, sometimes, that even though he, unlike Thor, understands things like cars and telephones and computers, even though he talks like them, he’s almost as much an outsider as the Asgardian.

Sometimes, though, like today, he thinks he might’ve been saved for a reason, and not the one everybody thinks. Oh, sure, had he not been around then maybe things would have gone differently in Manhattan, maybe Loki would be leading them all around by the nose now and New York City would be a nuclear crater. But he doubts it. As much as he and Stark rub each other the wrong way, the guy’s got a mind like a machine. He can see the most efficient way through or out of almost any situation. Even without Captain America on the team, Steve’s pretty sure the battle would have gone the same way.

Today, though, if it wasn’t for Steve everybody would be at work, Banner in the lab, Thor visiting Miss Foster, Tony and Pepper dealing with the media. Then, tomorrow, they’d all show up at Tony’s California mansion ready for their national day off, partying on the beach. Nothing wrong with that scenario, certainly. But from Steve’s point of view there’d be something missing if they didn’t make one stop first.

“I suddenly feel very underdressed,” Tony states, finally breaking the silence.

“You’re fine,” says Steve. “None of you were in the service, so you don’t have to change.”

“I beg to differ,” says Thor. There’s a shimmer and a crackle of electricity, a smell of ozone in the air, and his Earth clothes disappear under the armor they’re all more used to seeing him in. “If what we are doing requires the garb of a warrior, then that is what I shall wear.”

The elevator arrives and it’s a quiet ride down to the ground floor. Director Fury’s waiting for them, sans trenchcoat for once, wearing a black dress coat and slacks, and a black beret with a silver SHIELD logo embroidered on the front. Agents Barton and Romanoff flank him, black combat uniforms with a white shield logo on the breast pocket looking oddly normal compared to their preferred fighting dress.

Tony takes in Steve, the Agents, and Fury in formal military dress with a raised eyebrow.

“I called ahead to make sure it was okay if we showed up,” says Steve by way of explanation.

“And I had to remind him, again, that you’re all cleared up to level 4 and can visit headquarters any time. Hell, you’re entitled to office space here, not that you’re doing anything with it.” He steps to the side. “Lead on, Captain. Oh, and Mr. Stark, please desist in your efforts to hack into the building’s security cameras.” Tony puts on an innocent face, but he stops fidgeting with his watch.

Steve heads into the lobby, the others following. In the main atrium of the building, behind the security checkpoint, there is a wall of pure white marble, inlaid with the SHIELD seal outlined in shining brass. They’ve all walked past it countless times in the past few weeks, marching in and out of the building for briefings and debriefings and security clearance registration and more debriefings. But Steve’s pretty sure he’s the only one who’s ever stopped to _look_ at it. At the top, just under the ceiling, the words “They Gave All” are carved into the stone. And underneath, in neat rows, are brass stars, about five inches in diameter. Each star represents an Agent who died in service, stretching all the way back to the days when SHIELD was called the SSR. Under the stars is a blank space, where more will eventually be fixed. In the floor at the base of the wall, names and dates are inlaid in more brass, people who weren’t covert Agents at the times of their deaths, and people who were never Agents but worked in tandem with the SSR or with SHIELD.

Most of the stars are tarnished, the ones at the top nearly black. They’re never polished, so the level of wear is the only way to gauge how old they might be, who they might represent. At the bottom, nearly an entire row is filled with shiny new stars, and there are several holes where further new additions have yet to be added. The floor, too, is being worked on, as the clear plastic tarp covering part of it, held down at the corners with stonemason’s tools, attests.

Steve steps up to the wall, turns to face the others. “Tony told me this morning that tomorrow is a national holiday called Memorial Day. Well, when I was growing up, we called it Decoration Day or Remembrance Day. It wasn’t on the same day everywhere, and it didn’t have the same meaning for everyone, but for soldiers and their families it meant getting into uniform or dressing up and going to the cemeteries to put flowers on the graves of the fallen. It wasn’t a holiday. It wasn’t a party. It was a duty, a solemn ritual, a promise to them that we wouldn’t forget what they gave us. And that we wouldn’t waste it.” He sees the last bit of skepticism drain from Tony’s expression, sees the self-declared genius billionaire playboy philanthropist raise a hand to cover the mini reactor in his chest. Something he said got through.

“Now I’ve got nothing against celebrating the start of summer, and nothing against using a national holiday to mark it. But it seems to me that the nature of the day has changed, and that’s not right. We can’t break our promise. So I want to ask this of all of you: That we make every effort to be here the day before Memorial Day every year, so we can remember, and renew our promise to the people represented by these stars, and these names, and all those white stones lined up on the grass in Brooklyn and Queens and Long Island and Arlington and all over the country, and all over the world.”

“Seconded,” the Director speaks up, stepping forward.

“Motion passes,” Tony murmurs, standing with one arm around Pepper’s shoulders, hand still over the reactor.

Steve nods. Then he turns, looking up at the stars on the wall. Hers won’t be one of the oldest ones, the ones at the very top that have turned nearly black over the decades, shiny around the edges where they’ve been moved from wall to wall as headquarters changed locations. It’ll be somewhere in the second row, one of the ones just starting to take on the greenish tinge of tarnish over the dull patina. He picks one near the middle. “Agent Margaret Carter,” he says. Then he looks down at the floor, not really seeing the names inlaid there, not needing to. “First Lieutenant James Buchanan Barnes. Second Lieutenant Timothy Dugan. Sergeant Major Gabe Jones. Sergeant Major Jim Morita. Sergeant Major James Montgomery Falsworth. First Sergeant Jacques Dernier.” He takes a breath to say one more name, thinks better of it, turns and waves Tony forward.

With Pepper in tow, Tony steps up to the wall. Steve points at the name he was about to read out. Tony looks down, then lets out a chuckle that’s got nothing to do with humor. “Oh, no, Steve. You knew him better than I did.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that you should be the one to say his name.”

“If you say so.” He’s trying to play it off, but Steve can see the way he’s pulling Pepper in close. Tony takes a deep breath and says, “Howard Stark.” Then, after a pause, he adds, “Doctor Yinsen.”

They turn back to face the group again. Director Fury steps forward, pulling something out of his pocket. It’s a new star, brass an inch thick and as wide across as his hand, pegs sticking out of the back where it will be fitted into the wall. “Thought you’d all want to be here when this one went up,” he says, holding it out with the reverse side up.

Inscribed into the metal is the name _Agent Philip J. Coulson_.

It’s Dr. Banner who moves first, reaching out and putting a hand over the star. The two Agents are quick to do the same, fingers interlacing. Thor follows, then Tony and Pepper. Steve hesitates, a set of bloodstained trading cards with his face on them flashing across his memories. His hand hovers over the others’.

Tony catches his eye and there’s understanding there. “He was worth ten of me,” he says, and nobody else gets why Steve lets out a short laugh as he lowers his hand.

“He believed in heroes,” says Fury.

“He’d be proud of you guys,” Pepper adds.

“He was a good Agent,” Agent Romanoff says, the compliment meaning more coming from her.

“He could be trusted to watch your back,” says Barton.

“He was a brother-in-arms, and a good friend,” Thor proclaims.

Dr. Banner nods. “He saw the truth in people.”

Looking around at the others, Steve finishes, “He was one of us. An Avenger.”

They all withdraw their hands. Fury holds the star out to Steve. “Captain, will you do the honors?”

“It’d be my pleasure, Director.” Steve takes the brass symbol and walks back to the wall. Technically, he knows, he should put it in the next available spot. But instead, he counts the number of spots in each row, picks one in the middle at face-level, and holds the star up to it. The holes in the wall are the tiniest bit smaller than the pegs on the back of the star, and normally it would take power tools to hammer it in. But with a grunt of effort, Steve shoves the star into the wall by hand, a small puff of marble dust and metal shavings floating out from behind as it slides into place. He steps back and snaps his hand up in a crisp salute.

“Agent Phil Coulson,” he says.

“Agent Phil Coulson,” the others repeat, almost in unison.

Steve drops his salute and turns around. “Now, I don’t know about your modern traditions, but in the old days this would be the part where we would go get a drink.”

“Yep, that’s still what we do,” says Tony. “Care to join us, Director? I know you already turned down my party invite, but you can at least let me buy you a beer.”

“Normally I would decline any invitation from you, Stark. But it’s a special occasion. I’m feeling particularly warm and fuzzy at the moment. So I will take you up on your offer. One beer. Don’t make me regret this.”

“Great! You won’t regret it, trust me. Cross my heart.”

“Coming from you, that expression doesn’t reassure me.”

“It’s still in there somewhere. Probably.”

They move toward the front door, Tony back to his usual bantering, abrasive, always-in-high-gear self. Steve’s still not sure what he said that got the guy to stop trying to one-up everyone in conversation for five minutes. He’s read everyone’s file, and he’s sure they’ve all read his, but there are some layers to Tony Stark that even the file doesn’t cover. There are layers to all of them the files don’t cover, for that matter.

“Captain?”

Steve hesitates for a step, looks around. He doesn’t see anybody he knows. _Must not have been talking to me_.

“Captain Rogers?” Steve stops, turns around. He sees him now, an old man, ninety if he’s a day, walking with a cane. He’s just come out of the elevator and is headed right for Steve, wearing the modern-day mirror of Steve’ uniform. His collar tabs tell Steve he’s a Lieutenant Colonel. He’s pretty fit for his age, still has all his hair, carries himself with dignity. Steve has absolutely no idea who he is.

“Can I help you?”

Instead of answering, the man walks right up to him before stopping and staring into his face. “My God, it’s really you! When I saw the news footage I could hardly believe it. I thought they must have found some other poor bastard to experiment on. You haven’t aged a day since I last saw you in Italy!” He grins, looks down for a moment. “Guess I can’t say the same for myself. You probably don’t recognize me. Hell, you probably don’t even remember me at all.”

“Italy. You were there?”

In answer, the old Lieutenant Colonel taps one of the medals on his chest. Steve’s got one too. It’s an Italian Campaign medal from the war, awarded to the members of the 107th who fought HYDRA at the front lines.

“You were in the 107th! Did you know Bucky…Sergeant Barnes?”

The old man shakes his head. “Nah, not really. He did rough me up a few times, before I enlisted.”

The nagging feeling at the back of Steve’s mind resolves into a name. “Gilmore Hodge! You used to beat me up out behind the movie theater! And the Silver Star. And our school.”

Lieutenant Colonel Hodge smiles like Steve’s just paid him a huge compliment. “So you _do_ remember. I don’t think I ever got the chance to apologize for all that. ‘Course, back then I was more jealous than sorry. They picked you over me, after all.”

“Yeah, you were kind of an ass,” Steve says, then remembers the difference in their ranks and blushes as he adds a belated, “Sir. Sorry.”

Hodge laughs, waves off the honorific. “Forget it, kid. You might be down as a Captain on paper but as far as I’m concerned you outrank the whole lot of us. When they told us what you did with that bomber, I think that was the first time I ever felt something toward somebody that was worth anything. Made _me_ want to be worth anything. We all of us owe you. Twice, now.”

“Rogers, you coming?” Fury calls from the front door.

“Just a minute,” Steve yells back.

“Go on,” says Hodge, “go be with your friends. I was just on my way home, the family’s over for the long weekend and we’re taking our grandkids to the water park, give the kids a break for a few hours.”

Steve shakes his head, “You found someone willing to marry you?”

Hodge shrugs, “No accounting for taste. She’s too good for me, but aren’t they all?”

“Rogers, if you abandon us now after rescheduling my whole day, I will program your phone to ring every hour on the hour for the next week,” Tony yells from the parking lot.

“Sorry, Lieutenant Colonel. Some of the guys aren’t what you’d call the soul of patience.”

“I told you, son, none of that. Call me Gil.”

“Gil,” Steve says, then pauses, looking at him. _He’s got kids_ , flashes through his head, _and grandkids. A whole life, everything I missed out on_. “Gil, you got time for a drink?”


End file.
